Leaked MS ad video parodies Chrome as surveillance tech

Kettle, Kettle, come in, over. Kettle, kettle, do you copy, this is Pot, over

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A leaked Microsoft ad, meant only for internal consumption, parodies a Google campaign as it portrays Google Chrome as a data-snaffling privacy-stealing parasite.

Chrome is depicted as a surveillance technology to make money from private information for the benefit of Google. Redmond's slick propaganda video is a dig at Google's Chrome Everywhere campaign.

The video sits alongside Microsoft's overt "Scroogled" campaign, which recently hatched a merchandising arm intended to further blacken the reputation of Redmond's arch-rival Google. Microsoft has a legitimate point against the colossal advertising platform, but in many people's view Redmond will struggle to claim the moral high ground against Google over user privacy - especially given that (like all the major tech firms) it cooperated with the NSA's dragnet mass surveillance programs, and most particularly over allegations that MS made Skype calls easier to tap.

It could well be argued that Microsoft had no option but to take part in PRISM and other related spy programs; but its previous practices - such as code on its MSN website that secretly logged visitors' browsing histories across multiple web properties, even when the users deleted browser cookies to elude tracking - are less easy to defend on the grounds of necessity. ®